The Weekly Opinionated Jumblings of the News From the Past Week

Here are some of the news stories from the past week I thought were interesting and worth a read.  And it wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t throw in a few comments into the mix.

1.  Rick Latona has yet another business:  Yeah yeah, domains are dead.  As Sedo, MediaOptions, and Moniker sell millions of dollars worth of domains he claims domains aren’t profitable. We’re only 15 years into the Internet with many many profitable years ahead.  It’s easy to think our personal worlds are the real world but usually it’s just our little slice. Latona’s statement is a little like John Starks saying the Bulls wouldn’t win another championship while Jordan dunks over the top of him.  Just because you aren’t winning doesn’t mean somebody else isn’t.   And Flippa 2.  Watch out.  Someone is throwing darts.

2. DotWeekly Has a Great Story on Apple Domains, Gets Great Links and Doesn’t Make any Money:  Jamie does a great job digging out who is buying what.  Hours of research that we all love to read yet he doesn’t want to continue the daily column.  Why?  Because it takes hours and he doesn’t make any money blogging.  Would somebody advertise on his damn blog.  If he keeps putting out the good stories it’s certainly worth advertising on. The Google ads need to go.  I agree that people deserve compensation for their efforts but then again you have to make it easy for them to support you.  Jamie, you want to get paid for your work then let them know how and what spots they can buy from you.

3. Mike Mann sells women.co for $25K. Mike seems to be one of the few successfully selling dot co and making a true profit.  Lots of sales but more people holding. I love dot co for businesses but don’t see a ton of money being made on flips.  People are certainly making money in dot co but I do think it’s a zero sum game on the flip side.  But as a brand on the Internet I wouldn’t advise a company against it.

4. Adam Dicker calls out a few blogs for misleading newbies.  It’s been beat into the ground since then but we all left agreeing on a few things.  1. There are some blogs that are run by new domainers but that doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer.  2. People can read whatever they want to read and are responsible for doing their own homework. 3. Adam calling his secretary an “idiot” was probably the only thing that upset me in the statement.

5.  Salesforce buys Data.com for millions.  Another case of the best sales coming before or after a big auction. Everyone loves and dreams of the million dollar sales.  Unfortunately for the dreamers, the have names like datastuff.net and not data.com.

6. DomainFest Live Auction moved to not live auction and fizzles. You know what rich people and companies do?  I don’t know either but I know what they don’t do.  Participate in public auctions. They prefer privacy and behind closed door negotiation.  The live auction names at DomainFest are high dollar names.  Names that probably don’t lend themselves to a one week public auction.   There is a million dollars in it for someone that can make a live auction platform that can stand up to the rigours on big online traffic.  So far I haven’t seen it.

7. Somebody buys wallet.com  Another fantastic domain names is sold.  The names that are selling for big money deserve to sell for big money.  They are the cream of the crop. Everybody thinks they have one but in reality, very few do.

8.  Pay.com is put up for sale by Domain Advisors.  One of the best names on the market right now.  I like wallet.com better but the timing is perfect.

9. Finally, someone emailed Francois (and I know who it is) and told him I was setting up a domaining.com type aggregator to compete with domaining.com.  The truth is over a year ago I was thinking about setting up an aggregator for several different fields, gardening, tech, gadgets, domaining, and a few more.  I talked to a few people in those fields to see if they were interested.  I built a site and put it up for gardening as a test.  In the domain field I realized early there is no need for another field.  I did buy dnfeeds.com as well as other “feeds” names.  I am a businessman and as a businesman I explore ALL possiblities.  When you see a monopoly your first instinct is to see if you can bust that monopoly and make some money.  It’s in my blood.  Again, I realized I didn’t want to do it pretty quickly and Francois does a good job so I moved on.

I also was going to start up a “super blog” with Mike Sullivan called SeedHouse.com . It was going to be he and I and several other writers.  We were both working so hard individually I thought we could take a little pressure off and have multiple writers and have a site we could sell because it wasn’t self branded. We gave up the idea when he became part of MO. That’s still at the back of my mind but in the meantime I’ll just keep writing and having a good time. And of course I have a few things in the works but who knows what will become reality and which will be another far fetched dream.